Solar thermal company eSolar said last week that it is expanding in Africa and earlier this year it partnered with an Indian company to build solar power plants in India over the next 10 years.

And a $400 billion euro plan is gaining steam to power Europe with Sahara sunlight, despite critics.

Today’s top solar market — and lots of profits — are found in Germany while the United States and China are fast-growing alternative energy sectors. Will countries like South Africa join their ranks one day? How will countries and governments make good on the promise of solar energy for the developing world?

You failed to mention India’s proposed gigantic solar power project which will produce over 200 gigawatts of power, enough energy to supply 200,000,000 Indians with electricity and clearly the largest solar power project on earth. We are seeing the Indian government proactively taking the world lead in solar power development. Mark Montgomery boboberg@nyc.rr.com

Solar, while clean, is still incredibly inefficient. It is only “profitable” for companies at the present time because of massive taxpayer subsidies. Once those subsidies are gone (which will be soon), solar will not be viable until the technology improves exponentially (decades away). Until then, carbon and to a lesser extent, nuclear will be the least expensive and most efficient.

Every year the advance in technologies will make solar more cheap. This will tip the scale in favour of solar energy.
Secondly u don’t have to connect to the grid for the power.
People who install solar or other re power don’t have to worry about increased power bills.

What we should learn from our historical experience with energy is that we shouldn’t put all of our eggs in one basket. There is no reason that we can’t develop multiple energy generation technologies in wind, solar, biomass, and whatever else we develop that is truly clean and renewable.

I think it’s important that renewable energy allies don’t squabble between solar and wind. Even if it’s just because the technologies are too immature to declare a winner. Support renewable energy and don’t mudsling other technologies.

@ Ricardo: I think you’re blinded by your love for wind. There are many solar options that scale from low-tech to high-tech designs. Try to inform yourself before condemning and entire industry with thousands if not hundreds of thousands of derivative designs.

@ Robert. Solar thermal (i.e eSolar) is incredibly efficient. In direct heat applications, it can reach over 90% efficiency. Standard solar panels available commercially are only 15% efficiency, but high-performance ones reach 45% (but are more expensive). Furthermore, until we find a way to reflect the true cost of coal and other fossil fuels, it’s unreasonable condemn solar. And do you really think that there aren’t “subsidies” for coal and natural gas in the form of inequitably cheap access to mining rights, tax breaks, and other forms of government support. Just because solar subsidies are more transparent doesn’t mean there isn’t tax payer money going into traditional forms of fossil fuel based energy.

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Solar technology is still on an aggressive learning curve and as production increases, costs will drop with economies of scale. So will other renewable energy technologies. With advances in our economic system, such as a carbon tax, we may also find a way to better reflect the value of renewable energy systems such as solar.